Cameron Rules Out ‘Lurch to Right’ After Blow in Eastleigh Vote

By Andrew Atkinson -
Mar 3, 2013

Prime Minister David Cameron said
there will be no “lurch to the right” after his Conservative
Party slumped to third place behind the euroskeptic U.K.
Independence Party in a special election last week.

Britain’s future “will only be won if we reject the
cynicism, the political calculation and the easy ways out -- and
stick to the course we are on,” Cameron wrote in the Sunday
Telegraph newspaper.

His party’s showing in the Eastleigh ballot on Feb. 28 has
left Cameron facing the question of how he can revive support to
keep power in the 2015 general election. The Tories failed to
take votes from their Liberal Democrat coalition partners, who
retained the seat. While less than two months ago Cameron
pledged a referendum on European Union membership, the Tories
lost support to UKIP, which wants Britain to pull out of the EU.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the Conservatives had been
punished by their own supporters after adopting traditionally
non-Tory positions, including backing for same-sex marriage.

“The real problem the Conservatives have got isn’t UKIP,”
he told BBC Television’s “Andrew Marr Show” today. “The real
problem is their own supporters look at a Conservative Party
that used to talk about wealth creation, low tax and enterprise
and it now talks about gay marriage and wind farms.”

Speaking on the same program, Foreign Secretary William Hague, a Conservative, said Cameron was right not to consider a
change of course. “In a by-election of course people can have a
bit of an indulgence but a general election is a choice,” he
said. In the U.K., special elections to the House of Commons are
known as by-elections.

Economic Woes

Cameron is struggling to revive an economy that has barely
grown since his government took office in May 2010 and now
stands on the brink of an unprecedented triple-dip recession.
Moody’s Investors Service stripped the U.K. of its top debt
rating on Feb. 22 and a report on March 1 showing manufacturing
unexpectedly shrank last month sent the pound below $1.50 for
the first time since July 2010.

A YouGov Plc poll for today’s Sunday Times newspaper showed
Cameron’s approval rating fell to minus 23 from minus 15 and
that almost two-thirds of voters think his government is
managing the economy badly. The survey of 1,897 adults, taken
Feb. 28 and March 1, gave the opposition Labour Party an 11
percentage point lead over the Tories.

Business Secretary Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat, said
the weaker pound would boost exports and that priority was to
unlock infrastructure projects to get the economy moving.

Capital Spending

“My colleagues in government will be arguing very, very
strongly for a much a much heavier emphasis on capital spending
and infrastructure and getting these big project moving,” he
told BBC Television.

Defense Secretary Philip Hammond yesterday stoked coalition
tensions by saying that his department should be protected from
any further budget cuts and instead savings should be made by
squeezing welfare costs.

Cable said more welfare cuts would prove “very
difficult,” while Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron said
Hammond’s argument was “ludicrous” at a time when the Tories
want to spend billions of pounds to renew Britain’s Trident
nuclear deterrent.

“I heard Philip Hammond making those comments and you
think at a time like this to think that it’s more important to
be investing money into Trident or something like that, rather
than protecting those people who are the least well off in our
society -- that would be morally wrong as well as just
economically stupid,” Farron told the “Andrew Marr Show.”

Mansion Tax

Farron also signaled the Liberal Democrats were keeping an
open mind on whether to support Labour in a parliamentary vote
on its plan to levy extra tax on houses valued at more than 2
million pounds ($3 million). While the Liberal Democrats favor
the so-called mansion tax to help raise revenue, the
Conservatives are opposed.

“We’re all ears,” Farron said. “My view is not we should
be lured into any parliamentary trap by Labour but then again
sometimes you just have to look at things at face value.”